🧠 Sip smart: How your beverage choices impact stroke risk

Carbonated soft drinks, fruit juice, and coffee may increase the risk of stroke, but tea and water can lower it.

Recent findings from the INTERSTROKE study, one of the largest stroke risk factor research projects, found that:

• Drinking 4+ cups of coffee daily increases stroke risk by 37%

• Carbonated soft drinks were associated with a 22% higher risk of stroke

• Fruit juice drinks led to a 37% increase in the risk of haemorrhagic stroke (bleeding in the brain).

Drinking two or more of these beverages daily significantly amplified these risks.

On the other hand, tea consumption was linked to a reduced stroke risk: 29% for black tea and 27% for green tea. Drinking plenty of water was also shown to lower stroke risk.

But before you panic, these findings point to an association between sets of data rather than cause and effect. This means that coffee doesn’t cause stroke.

Also, the study does not explore the effect of concentration strength in the drinks (e.g. how strong coffee is), the addition of sugar and other ingredients, or the timing of coffee consumption (e.g. 4+ coffees within 10 hours or across the day).

🥊 Punchline

Reducing intake of sugars and synthetic stimulants (e.g. in energy drinks) may help against stroke prevention, but the link between high coffee intake and stroke is poor.

🦴 Osteoarthritis management: How low carb diets can help with pain

Osteoarthritis may be triggered by a cascade of metabolic dysfunctions.

Factors at play include low grade inflammation of the joint structures, increased free radicals and the presence of inflammatory immune cells.

These promote degeneration of the cartilage via negative effects on specialised cells within the joint.

A low carbohydrate approach has been shown to reduce pain and inflammation in human studies, with the exact mechanism currently being explored in a clinical setting.

In a small scale study, a low carb diet was more effective at decreasing knee pain in 20 osteoarthritis patients when compared to a normal diet and medication regimen.

It is hypothesised that ketones production (i.e. when the body switches to fat as the man fuel source rather than sugar) help reduce the effect of free radicals and inflammation.

The benefits of low carbohydrate diets could be greater than that of low fat diets.

🥊 Punchline

Though most studies on osteoarthritis are small in nature, a low carbohydrate approach hold promise to help manage osteoarthritis.

🦷 Sweet tooth woes: How sugary cravings can harm your health

People with a sweet tooth are at a higher risk of developing depression, diabetes, and suffering a stroke.

A new study used artificial intelligence to group volunteers into 3 general profiles based on on their food choices: health conscious, omnivore, sweet tooth.

When comparing blood results against health profiles, the sweet tooth group were 31% more likely to have depression, had higher rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease compared to the other two groups.

people with a sweet tooth consumed more added sugars and fats than the average UK adults (9% to 12.5% of calories come from added sugars).

Biscuits, buns, cakes, pastries and fruit pies are the biggest single contributors for adults in the UK, but together, sugary soft drinks and alcoholic drinks contribute the most to processed sugar intake.

Conversely, the health-conscious group (which also had higher dietary fibre intake) had lower risks for cardiovascular diseases, while the omnivore group had moderate health risks.

🥊 Punchline

If you have a sweet tooth and your favourite foods are cakes, sweets, and sugary drinks, the amount of added sugars and fats consumed can significantly increase your risk of disease.